Culture

Writers' Strike Diary, by Emily Poenisch

Dispatches from the front lines of the WGA strike, by Emily Poenisch in our West Coast office. DECEMBER 6, 2007 < h2>Recalling Storyville I spent the morning at Fox just west of the studios' main Pico entrance, at the ingloriously titled Truck Gate. A small handful of picketers were there when I arrived, but the group quickly dissipated as the morning wore on, leaving only science-fiction screenwriter Gary Goldman (Total Recall) and myself to hold the fort.

Gary Goldman. Skies were overcast and a nip was in the air, so it was just as well that Goldman had oodles of tales to tell. "I wanted to be an auteur," the writer began when asked about his start in the business. Goldman, it turns out, is a New Orleans native who, in his early 20s, devoted himself to research on the origins of jazz and the French Impressionist Edgar Degas, who spent part of his life in New Orleans. During his research, Goldman discovered that French filmmaker Louis Malle (The Lovers; Au Revoir, Les Enfants) had moved to Los Angeles where he was preparing a film about Storyville, New Orleans's red-light district. Goldman, knowing how useful his research would be to the director, was determined to make contact. Claiming to be a producer, he called Malle's office and gleaned not only that the director had gone to San Francisco but also the name of his hotel. The then 22-year-old promptly bought a plane ticket and followed him. Summoning the nerve to call Malle's room, he successfully secured an invitation to breakfast. It was off the back of that meeting that Goldman spent almost a year supplying the director with research, ultimately serving as Malle's assistant on Pretty Baby, the Storyville film the director finally wrote with Polly Platt, Peter Bogdanovich's first wife. But the position did not lead directly to screenwriting. Goldman took a detour, working at Paramount Studios during the tenure of Barry Diller. It was only after the life of a suit proved a poor match for him that he finally sat down and wrote his first spec script, which not only sold but was actually made: Big Trouble in Little China. Goldman was not yet 30. Intrigued by the fact that Goldman, by virtue of his stint as a studio workhorse, has a keen understanding of both the creative and business sides of the industry, I asked him about the dynamic between the two when it comes to the strike. "You know the writers haven't put up a fight in the last 20 years," he said. "It's only in the last two or three years that we've finally got ourselves organized, and it's almost like they're offended by that." —E. P. <a href="/culture/features/2007/12/strikediary15">[permalink] < h2class="ct"><a href="/culture/features/strikediary">Strike Diary Main